


if it kills me

by harinezumi_kun



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-25
Updated: 2011-08-25
Packaged: 2017-11-08 05:29:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/439667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harinezumi_kun/pseuds/harinezumi_kun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>and all i really wanna do is love you/a kind much closer than friends use</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	if it kills me

**Author's Note:**

> for a donation to the arashi_on fundraiser, for her request for ohmiya inspired by [If It Kills Me](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMgu9cmuGDg&feature=related) by Jason Mraz. turned out porny-er than i was planning, and yet no one actually has sex D: big thanks to Gen for the speedy last minute beta!

When Ohno is seventeen, he falls in love. He falls in love in the way he has always heard falling in love is supposed to happen—it is immediate, exquisitely painful, all consuming, and he thinks that maybe he could die from it. 

From almost the first moment Ohno sees him, Nino is all Ohno can think about. Nino is only fourteen, but he is beautiful and strange, strangely beautiful with his skinny limbs and awkward joints, and he _gets_ Ohno as only a very few people do. Nino only spends about three weeks in Kyoto, but he rarely leaves Ohno’s side, and they laugh at all the same jokes, wrestle like puppies (though with more groping), sneak into each other’s rooms at night, and talk about running away from Johnny’s, maybe together, maybe forever.

They don't run, of course, and Ohno doesn't say anything about his fierce, overwhelming affection. It's almost like a game—how long can he hold it in, how long can he wait for Nino to notice, to do something about it. Three weeks go by too fast, like a season passing, and when it is time for Nino to leave, to go back to Tokyo, Ohno thinks about confessing, about saying something crazy like “Don’t go”, like “I love you”. He doesn’t, though, he just smiles back at Nino’s grinning face and they exchange phone numbers.

Ohno pines for about a week, thinking about the unfairness of it all, missing Nino's hands and his smiles that curl up at the corners, and daring himself to call Nino up and just _say_ it. He doesn't, he has rehearsals to distract him, the occasional TV spot or magazine shoot to go to, and life goes back to how it was before Nino, and Ohno is content to get random text messages and keep those three weeks in a golden glowing compartment in his heart reserved for the most special of memories.

He doesn't see Nino again until Hawaii and honestly isn't expecting to—they were both planning to have quit by now, by all rights Nino should be in California and Ohno should be living at home and working some boring part time job. But there's Nino on the plane, looking just as surprised to see Ohno and insisting that Sho switch seats with him so he can sit next to Oh-chan.

It's a bit overwhelming because, though Nino is exactly as Ohno remembers him, he is obviously good friends with Sho-kun and Matsumoto-kun and Aiba-kun and has been with them in the Tokyo Juniors and they have their own jokes that Ohno doesn't get, and Aiba treats Nino like a brother and a punching bag and there is apparently some kind of tension between Sho and Matsumoto that Ohno doesn't really understand. Nino explains some of it to Ohno in undertones, but Nino's little breaths against his ear aren't helping Ohno's tension level and he finds himself getting quieter and quieter. 

“Are you mad at me?” Nino wants to know, later when the lights on the plane have been turned down and almost everyone else is asleep. 

Ohno shakes his head, but doesn't know how to tell Nino, doesn't know how to explain the slow dread that's been creeping up on him since they took off, so he takes Nino's hand instead. This is something Nino seems to understand and he squeezes Ohno's fingers in his own and doesn't ask any more questions.

The staff doesn’t tell them they’re debuting until they touch down and after that everything is a blur of cameras, interviews, boats, balloons, and people telling Ohno: “You’re the oldest so you’re the leader now”. He doesn’t want this, this is the last thing he wants, he tells Nino so during a quiet moment below decks between forced smiles and declarations about how they are going to make a storm throughout the world.

“I know that,” Nino says, muffled by the damp towel he has draped over his head, voice echoing around in the bucket between his knees. “I know that, you don’t have to tell me—you think this is what _I_ want, when all I used to talk about was running away?”

Ohno makes a quiet little “oh, yeah” that Nino doesn’t even seem to hear.

“But we can’t run, not anymore. Jun-kun and Aiba, they _do_ want this, more than anything, I know they do, but this is so fucked up, because we just left Toma behind,” (Ohno remembers Toma vaguely as someone he liked, but that’s all, isn’t sure why it’s relevant), “and—and Sho-chan, god, he’s getting ready to start university and he’s going to have a heart attack from the stress, I just know it.”

For a moment, Ohno thinks Nino may have wound down, but then his shoulders give a little hitch and he says, “Oh-chan, you better back up because I’m gonna be sick”.

Part of Ohno wants to be angry at Nino for being so practical, for displaying so little of the empathy he remembers, but instead he just rubs Nino’s back through the seasickness and retreats a little more into his own head to try and get a hold on all of this. 

He is pretty checked out for the next few days of running around on beaches, eating hamburgers and having his picture taken more than he ever has in his life. The other boys (his band members now, he has to keep reminding himself) make sure to pull him back down to Earth when it’s important, and more often than not, Ohno finds himself with a hand on Nino somewhere—an arm around Nino’s waist, or over his shoulders or just the comfortable hand-holding they are accustomed to. 

That’s how it starts. It stays that way after Hawaii, too, after Ohno has been made the official leader in a not-so-official game of janken, after the first single, the first album, the first concert, after tensions between the members have shifted if not quite settled yet. For Ohno, thinking back on it is like remembering a very vivid dream—some of the scenes are brighter than life and surreal in their intensity while the rest is just vague impressions of faces and colors and feelings. And realizing that somehow five years has passed is something akin to waking up; suddenly he realizes this is his life, no one is quitting, they are practically a family now and despite everything that has changed, one very important thing has remained the same.

Ohno is still desperately, painfully in love with Nino.

It’s not that he stopped between then and now, or that he forgot, it’s just that it got put on the back burner in favor of everything else that was going on, and while the feeling itself hasn’t changed, the way Ohno feels it has. It is no longer a world-shaking revelation, but something so natural that he doesn’t even have to think about it: of course he loves Nino, how could he not? 

Ohno lets the idea, the feeling, bounce around in his head again after so many years of dormancy: what does it mean that he’s in love with Nino? What should he do about it? He wonders if this changes anything about all the touching, all the flirting, the fact that most of it now comes from Nino instead of Ohno, the running gag about their secret romance. The biggest question on his mind, of course, is: what about Nino?

The problem with Nino is that he never gives Ohno an opening. Nino goes through girlfriends (and less publicly, boyfriends) like he goes through video games, giving each his complete devotion for as long as it takes him to get bored or just get finished. It has never occurred to Ohno, in five whole years, to see anything romantic in Nino’s playing because Nino always seems to have someone else, and it is only now that Ohno begins to resent the fact. Why can’t Nino just look at _him_ , just look at Ohno who is right here and still hopelessly, exquisitely in love with Nino?

Ohno is a firm believer in honesty and saying what he feels, but there is a lot more riding on a confession now than his own heartbreak—there is Arashi, and no matter how accidental his appointment to the job, Ohno is their Leader and he would die before letting them down. If he confessed and Nino turned him down, there would be no way for them to avoid each other, no hope of not getting the other members involved. Even if Nino said “Yes, Oh-chan, I love you too”, there’s no telling if the others would be okay with it, if they would be uncomfortable or angry. Ohno is stuck, unable to come to any kind of conclusion about what he should do, so he decides to just sit back and let fate take its course. 

That’s when the dreams start.

For Ohno, dreaming is not something that necessarily happens in conjunction with sleeping. He can be wide awake and in the middle of an interview and start dreaming, which gets him in trouble already, but the situation becomes exponentially worse when the dreams are about Nino.

Which isn’t to say that Ohno has never fantasized about Nino before, but when Ohno was a teenager, his fantasies were much more likely to fade to black after, say, a kiss, or getting Nino’s shirt off. Now that he’s older, more experienced, things are a little more…intense. 

It’s not really surprising to Ohno that it starts with Nino’s hands, because he has always loved Nino’s hands and Nino’s hands tend to be somewhere on Ohno’s body more often than not. But now when Nino lays a hand on Ohno’s knee, or his thigh, Ohno finds himself imagining that hand sliding up and up, maybe cupping him through his pants, or Nino’s clever fingers popping the button of Ohno’s jeans and pulling down the zip, slowly, slowly, before dipping inside. 

The first time this happens they are, thankfully, still backstage. Ohno stares and stares at the hand Nino has dropped to his knee, completely lost in a fantasy where Nino’s fingers are gliding up his inseam. 

“What?” he hears Nino say, but isn’t really listening. In his head, Nino’s hand has stopped right in front of his fly, just hovering without touching, but he can still feel how warm it is.

And then Nino’s hand is gone, and Nino is muttering, “Sorry, jeez, you could have just said something.”

“Huh?” Ohno says by way of reply, blinking dazedly and crossing his legs.

It goes on like this, and Ohno even seems to lose control of his own hands, sometimes, and it doesn’t help that the nipple-shirts have become a running gag, now. Nino seems completely nonplussed by this new development and shrugs Ohno off irritably, but Nino keeps up his own campaign of assault on Ohno’s ass and “Because it’s my _job_ , Oh-chan”, he says self-importantly when Ohno asks about this blatant double-standard.

Things snowball from there. Ohno’s fantasies move from Nino’s hands and nipples to his mouth, his ass, his cock, _everything_ , and Ohno can imagine it so well, how Nino would look laid out naked on the couch in a hastily locked greenroom with little red marks all across his neck and shoulders from Ohno’s mouth, or the noises Nino would make if Ohno dragged him into a bathroom stall and sucked him off. Ohno makes a habit of jerking off in the morning before coming to work because if this keeps up, he’s definitely going to get caught. But he fantasizes about that, too, about Nino finding him all worked up and hard, and what would Nino do then? Maybe he would drop to his knees and take Ohno in his mouth, maybe he would let Ohno fuck him against the wall, fast and dirty, maybe he would kiss Ohno so soft and slow that Ohno would come just like that, in his pants, without even a touch.

The breaking point comes during the summer tour, on a night when Ohno is the last in the showers after the show so he misses the handing out of room keys and comes back to his room to find Nino already spread out on the bed with his PS2 set up next to the TV. And the thing is that there is only the one bed.

_It’s fine_ , Ohno tells himself firmly, then strips down to boxers and an undershirt, climbs into his side of the bed and lays down to sleep. Nino just carries on playing Zelda, poking Ohno with his toes a few times just because, but eventually gets caught up in his game. The bright colors on the screen flash over the walls in the dark room and behind Ohno’s eyelids as he tries to even out his breathing. It will be fine.

He isn’t aware of falling asleep, but he must have done because the next thing he knows he finds himself naked, and Nino too, and Nino is poised over Ohno, smiling his familiar impish smile but with a burn of lust in his eyes and the technicolor videogame flashes washing over his skin. Everything is hot, close, heavy, and the sound coming from the television seems oddly loud, distorted. Ohno has just enough time to realize what is going on, to realize he already has his legs wrapped tight around Nino’s waist, before Nino pushes in.

Ohno’s mouth opens wide but he cannot hear whatever noise he makes. He does not stop to think about how strange this is, doesn’t think at all because it doesn’t hurt like it should, it feels good, so good, he is so full and it is Nino, Nino above him, smiling down on him, _moving_ inside him, so good, and he could die from it, just this—

And then he wakes up. The room is dark and quiet now, and Ohno is hard, almost painfully so, sweaty, and breathing roughly through his mouth. He must have jerked awake, or made some kind of noise, because Nino stirs beside him, still mostly asleep. Before Ohno can move away, Nino is turning towards him, winding an arm around his chest with a mumbled, “Oh-chan? Bad dream?” Ohno makes a monosyllabic response—his head is spinning, still, from the dream, and he doesn’t know if he’s hoping Nino wakes up or falls right back to sleep. The decision is made for him, however, when Nino makes to hook a leg over Ohno’s and his knee comes up against Ohno’s erection. 

Ohno makes a noise without meaning to, a breathless, broken “A-ah”, and after a moment of complete stillness, Nino says, “Oh”.

Ohno isn’t sure what he’s expecting next, but it isn’t the little giggle Nino lets out. “Pervy old man,” he says, right next to Ohno’s ear. He still sounds only half-awake. “What were you dreaming about?”

“I—” Ohno almost denies it, then stops himself. He has been waiting for fate to give him an opening, hasn’t he? Why not take it? So instead he says: “You.”

There is another pause, and then Nino says quietly, “Me?”

Ohno nods, and when Nino just lies there, silent and unmoving, Ohno extricates himself carefully, because he really needs to take care of this hard-on, and Nino probably needs some time to think. When Ohno comes back from the bathroom, feeling much more relaxed, the bedside lamp is on and Nino is sitting up in the bed with his glasses on and a little line between his eyebrows. Ohno sits down next to him without getting back under the covers.

“Why were you having sexy dreams about me?” Nino demands, looking kind of annoyed. Ohno glances away abashedly, then turns to face Nino fully.

“Well,” he begins. “See, the thing—” But it is very hard to figure out where to start with all this, how to explain it so that it makes sense, so eventually he just says, “It’s just that I love you,” because it is simple, to the point, and most of all true.

Nino blinks at that, his annoyed look replaced with one of surprise. 

“You really do, don’t you?” he says finally, with something almost like consternation. He brings one hand up to poke at Ohno’s cheek, but there’s a little smile forming at the corner of Nino’s lips as he does it.

Ohno just nods again, searching Nino’s face, waiting. Nino sees the expression and smiles a little wider, bashful almost, and gives a long suffering sigh.

“Yes, as it turns out, I love you, too,” he says. Then his brows draw down again. “When?” he asks sharply.

“The first time I met you,” Ohno answers easily, honestly. “Since always, I guess.”

“Damn,” Nino says on another sigh. “All this time, and both of us just—” but he cuts himself off and rubs his hands across his face, displacing his glasses. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“Why didn’t you?” Ohno retorts. “And you were always dating other people.”

Nino scowls at Ohno through his fingers, starts to say, “Well, you—”, changes his mind and tries, “It wasn’t—” and eventually ends up with, “It was complicated.”

Definitely true, Ohno thinks, but the hard part is over now as far as he is concerned. There is still a wiggling, joyful feeling in his gut that burst to life as soon as he heard Nino say “I love you”, and it’s trying to tremble its way out through his skin and he really, really, really wants to kiss Nino right now, but he’s not sure if that’s allowed yet because despite everything Nino is viciously of protective of his personal space when he wants to be.

Then Nino looks at him, and Ohno falls in love with him a little more, because Nino is looking at him like he knows exactly what Ohno is thinking, and then he says softly, “Come here, Oh-chan.”

Ohno scoots closer, as close as he dares, and then he dares again when he reaches out to place a hand against Nino’s face, although it’s not so daring because it was more like he couldn’t help it. Nino leans into the touch, leans into Ohno until their mouths meet in the middle. 

And this is the first time, the first time they have done this just because they wanted to, without anyone watching and laughing. They linger on that first kiss, that first touch, for a long time, not frozen and awkward like a TV kiss, but a slow press and withdrawal and soft sighs from both of them when they pull apart. They grin stupidly at each other for a moment, but then Ohno kisses Nino again, has to kiss him again because he has been waiting so long. Again, and again, because the real thing is so much better than any fantasy, and he gets lost in it for a while, the taste of Nino’s mouth and the soft touch of his tongue, and Nino’s arms wrapping around him, and one of Nino’s hands sliding into his hair to change the angle and make the kiss deeper, and Ohno thinks that maybe he’s still dreaming after all.

It is, however, still the middle of the night, and Nino eventually makes some noise about how they should probably go to sleep, seeing as they have another performance tomorrow. 

They both lie down again, just as they were before, with Nino draped across Ohno under the covers. It’s odd, Ohno thinks, that it doesn’t really feel all that different, being with Nino like this, except for the deep pulse of contentment he feels right alongside his heartbeat. He wonders if it will feel different in the morning, if it will feel awkward and uncomfortable, if the others will notice, if they will say anything. But it is difficult to imagine here and now, and soon he finds himself returning to unconsciousness.

“You know,” Nino says a few minutes later, when Ohno is almost asleep again, “I was thinking. It’s not really fair that you’re the only one who got off. So you owe me one.”

This seems like a wonderful prospect, and Ohno can think of a dozen fantasies that need fulfilling already. In his half-conscious state, he smiles against the top of Nino’s head.

“It’s a deal,” he says.


End file.
